Appellate Review Statistics

Florida Supreme Court: Discretionary Review Statistics

July 16, 2009: Monroe County v. Collins, et al., review denied for lack of jurisdiction, Fla. S. Ct. Yesterday, the Florida Supreme Court issued its Order Denying the Petition for Discretionary Review filed by Monroe County and the State of Florida, 66 days after the last brief was filed. That bears out my prediction that the government had only an 11% chance of winning, but was 26 days quicker than the average denial in the past 12 months. So much for my prediction of September 1-15 -- after the court returns from vacation. The government cannot now appeal the Third District Court of Appeal's decision to the United States Supreme Court, because the 90-day deadline for Supreme Court review has passed. As the governments' "petition for discretionary review" is not an "appeal," the federal 90-day clock continued to run. The governments' appeal to the US Supreme Court had to have been filed by May 20, 2009. Oh, yes. And the supreme court awarded attorneys' fees to the plaintiffs. But only $2,500. When was the last time they had to hire a lawyer, 1975?

Statistical Analysis of Florida Supreme Court Denials of Petitions for Discretionary Review.

July 12, 2009:  Monroe County and the State of Florida filed petitions with the Florida Supreme Court, for discretionary review of the Third DCA's decision in Collins, et al. v. Monroe County & the State of Florida, on February 27, 2009. In a decadal analysis of the supreme court's 1990 -- 1999 workload, only eleven percent of all discretionary review petitions were successful (1,103 out of 9,874). On July 11, 2009, I analyzed how long it took the supreme court to decide  the 121 discretionary review petitions that were denied in the past year (July 11, 2008 -- July 10, 2009). I computed the days from the filing of the last brief, to the date of the denial of review. (The date of filing the petition is irrelevant, as at least one-third of all 242 briefs were rejected for exceeding the 10-page limit (as was Monroe County's), or because an element was missing (our 7-page brief was rejected as it had no summary). I also excluded about a dozen petitions where the prevailing party below did not file a brief.)

The answer is 92 days (±39 days).

For those 121 discretionary review petitions denied review in the past year, the average number of days between the filing of the last brief, and the decision, was 92 calendar days -- though only two decisions were made in exactly 92 days. But ... 27 decisions (22%) fell between 82 and 102 days! Given that the last brief in the Collins proceeding was filed May 11, 2009, one might conclude a denial would issue 92 days later -- on or about August 11, 2009.

Oops -- our supreme court takes a 30-day vacation every year, between July 14 and August 14. But, you might argue -- the supreme court took a 30-day vacation last year, so the vacation is "included" in our 92-day average. Well, yes, sort of -- but last year's one-month vacation only affected 1/12th of our one-year database. So the "real" time to a decision is something less than 92 days. But, let's just stick with 92 days and not over-think this vacation thing.

Conclusion: The County/State discretionary review petition has an  89% probability of being denied, and the denial  could be released between September 1 and 21, 2009 (~22% probability). The standard deviation is ±39 days, but we do not have a truly Gaussian distribution. The data are skewed to the left, indicating a decision is more likely sooner than later.